On Friday, December 1, 2023 at 11:26:04 AM UTC-5, Will Dockery wrote:
> General-Zod wrote:
> > George J. Dance wrote:
> >> Zod wrote:
> >>> George J. Dance wrote:
> >
> > Today's poem on Penny's Poetry Blog:
> > Silk Diamond, by George Sulzbach
> >
> > Silk diamond
> > September golden bullet
> > The leather horse
> > Rider
> > With bad news.
> > [...]
> >
> > https://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2021/09/silk-diamond-george-sulzbach.html
> > I thank you G.D.
> >
> > Looks great..!
> > Thanks. I'm glad it's on.
> >
> > As someone else put it, not as diplomatically, some people have challenged my judgement in including it. So I'd like to take a few minutes, and talk about why I included it.
> >
> > First of all, I'll admit, SD would not have been included if it hadn[t mentioned "September." But while referencing the month was necessary, it was hardly sufficient. I read over a dozen poems about "September" Saturday morning, and rejected all of them as being unsuitable for the context (where it appeared in the monthly archive).
> >
> > It's very much in the Beat (or post-Beat) genre, of disjointed, swirling, "fragmented" images that so many people were writing (and so many were parodying) in the '70s and '80s, when I first got interested in poetry. As such, it fits with the selection that comes before it (today's), which is by a recognized Beat (but very light-hearted).
> >
> > Post-Beat poetry is very much written in what Northrop Frye calls the second stage of a lyric poet's evolution, the 'private language' phase; so I've got to admit that I have no idea what story and theme you intend; I had to read the poem myself and make up my own. The first phrase that struck me and I had to interpret was "September golden bullet": I imagined a single yellow leaf blowing by in the wind, the first sign of the end of summer and the coming of winter. That gave me a story: because winter's coming on, the speaker has to leave his lady (whom he calls "Silk Diamond" - your "Picture of the Lady" reinforces that idea), because he has to "cross the pass" before winter.
> >
> > He has to leave her and cross the pass because of the "bad news"; there is a "desperado / With a taste for murder" loose in the land. That gave me two interpretations. On the first, he has to leave her to go fight against the
> > desperado; which reminded me of Richard Lovelace's "To Lucasta, Going to the Wars." On the second interpretation, "crossing the path" was an allegory, for dying: he's leaving her by dying, and the desperado is simply Death itself.
> >
> > That last interpretation made it a great lead into Wilcox's poem about the "September of her Life," her good days being over and her death in front of her. It fit, in a way that no other poem did fit.
> >
> > As I say, I could have completely misunderstood your poem; that's a hazard of "private language" poetry. But most of your poetry is "private language". Which brings me to my last reason for including it. It is representative of your work; and while you already have two poems on the blog, neither are representative: "Expecting Inspiration" was in a whole different vein, which is what attracted me to it initially. And "Dandelions" was (1) specifically written for a poetry challenge, ie not a topic you chose, and (2) changed by an editor into a format that owes more to Stevens than to Sulzbach ("Four ways of looking at dandelions"). Adding SD gives a fairer picture of your work.
> >
> > Someone challenged my judgement last night,
> > and it might have caused a huge family fight
> > had I not simply said, "Alright!
> > You win! I'm in no mood to write!"
> >
> > I lost the argument. I'm told
> > that happens more as we grow old,
> > so without words, our truths unfold.
> > Silence is worth its weight in gold.
> > Very nice, even if off-topic. Definitely a keeper for your blog and your own book (should you decide to do one).
> > I'd encourage you to post it in it's own thread, where I'd like to say more.
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > Hi and THX again.....
>
> Good back story

Good day...